Twenty-five pages from a never-before-exhibited sketchbook of drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat will be on view by appointment only at "As If Gallery," an uptown space curated by Diego Cortez, until May 28. The notebook was made in 1981 for musician Arto Lindsay when Basquiat stayed with him in an East Village apartment.

More information at the AS IF website. AS IF Gallery is a collaboration between Nicole Rauscher, Seth Tillet and Diego Cortez. The gallery is "dedicated" to their friend Sylvère Lotringer, of Semiotext(e). The gallery is located at 529 Manhattan Ave (near Morningside Park and 122nd Street). Appointments can be made at asif@asifgallery.com, and the show will be up from May 7 - 28th, 2011 (Wednesday-Saturday, noon to 6 pm).

The pages are scrawled on lined notebook paper. There are some simple drawings of the heads, crowns, cars and other images typical of his work in 1980 and early '81. But as in the the other posthumously published Basquiat notebook, many of the pages are just words in the artist's distinctive upper-case handwriting, combining in his cut-up style of writing -- pieces made of expanded phrases extending his post-SAMO graffiti work. As the publicity for the exhibition notes, the notebook "illustrates Basquiat's hand at absurdist and concrete poetry with equally fragmented drawings incorporating his sputters of speech."

1981, when this notebook was created, was an important transitional year for Basquiat. The amount of different work he produced is amazing. In 1980 he was still known only as the anonymous SAMO graffiti writer. In February of '81 he had his informal work, including his first, deceptively childlike, paintings, shown at the New York / New Wave exhibition at PS 1 in Queens (also curated by Diego Cortez). By the end of the year he had had his first one-person show, was part of the SOHO Annina Nosei gallery, had a studio in the gallery basement, and a new place to live. As I mentioned in the last post, in December '81 "The Radiant Child" article by Rene Ricard in Artforum sent him to art world stardom. But in the beginning of the year he was still homeless, staying in the apartments of a series of temporary girlfriends and friends. 

Arto (the intense dissident No Wave guitarist for DNA and an early incarnation of the Lounge Lizards with John Lurie) relates that "I was staying at JL's apartment while he was out of town. The last thing JL said before he left was 'Don't let Jean-Michel stay over.' Of course the minute he left Jean-Michel showed up and stayed the weekend with me. When Jean-Michel left, he left these notebook pages for me on top of my stuff."

Arto goes on to say: